As they say, mathematics is the queen of all sciences (and Gauss is the prince of mathematicians, to finish my list of list of monarchs). Long time ago, when I was still innocent, I even heard it is the language of all sciences. But my curiosity with maths did not survive for long after finishing preparing for exams. Exams were the main motivating factor besides trying to impress the teacher, and to feel like I am smart. What is smartness but a result of constant prodding by people around us, 'all hail the smart man, the getter of highest marks, the doer of all home work, the retainer of top rank'. That is why, one should always join less popular schools to feel smart, to feel great. I have had the pleasure of joining a few of them, most of the cases. Once I feel I am useless for anything, everything is an improvement.
Coming back to maths, with its closed reasoning, seemed just awaiting death, when I sensed the openness of algorithms. Unlike maths, one can perform an much as one wants, and say that is the current worst case performance, and can be improved in the future, with respect any algorithm. That is why some algorithms survive with full respect despite being 'trivial'. But maths sees everything in black and white. The recent influx of artificially intelligently optimizing algorithms made mathematics look even ancient, and out of time. After all what is the fun in creating a few axioms(that are so obviously true, that we feel like wasting ink writing 'axiom') and playing with only the truths that can be deduced from axioms? Compare with the endless possibilities (there is one that can even drive a car) offered by inductive reasoning with every atom in the universe. Who will do the purposeless search down the tree starting from axioms, to lemma, theorems (and corollaries)? Teach the computer to walk the rope, and it can find all the ends.
And so, I dethroned mathematics from its place thinking algorithms and inductive learning will surpass the silly search down the tree. But the silly search did hit its edge, sooner than one could have expected a few decades ago. Computing power is getting plateaued while algorithms are stuck with non deterministic polynomial time turing machines since the 70s. Algorithms and computation has hit their limit, the same one that mathematicians have been trying to solve since a few thousand years.
At the end there is only one problem, and that is search. Every other solution is a variant of the search problem. Someone once asked Diagenes why he carries a lamp with him all the time, and he said he is searching for a Man. Maths is just a way of practicing sciences in a way that gives legitimacy to our inability to solve the search problem. We just say maths is hard, instead of, well, I cannot solve the search problem. I recently fell upon the fact that Maths and computer science used to be part of same department called maths department. Let's hope both strands of smart people come together to solve the search problem, and hope they can also find the answer to why we are here, and what are are we doing here. But it should also include a caveat that kings once upon a time used put on the smart people, that either they should solve or risk being thrown out of the kingdom.
Coming back to maths, with its closed reasoning, seemed just awaiting death, when I sensed the openness of algorithms. Unlike maths, one can perform an much as one wants, and say that is the current worst case performance, and can be improved in the future, with respect any algorithm. That is why some algorithms survive with full respect despite being 'trivial'. But maths sees everything in black and white. The recent influx of artificially intelligently optimizing algorithms made mathematics look even ancient, and out of time. After all what is the fun in creating a few axioms(that are so obviously true, that we feel like wasting ink writing 'axiom') and playing with only the truths that can be deduced from axioms? Compare with the endless possibilities (there is one that can even drive a car) offered by inductive reasoning with every atom in the universe. Who will do the purposeless search down the tree starting from axioms, to lemma, theorems (and corollaries)? Teach the computer to walk the rope, and it can find all the ends.
And so, I dethroned mathematics from its place thinking algorithms and inductive learning will surpass the silly search down the tree. But the silly search did hit its edge, sooner than one could have expected a few decades ago. Computing power is getting plateaued while algorithms are stuck with non deterministic polynomial time turing machines since the 70s. Algorithms and computation has hit their limit, the same one that mathematicians have been trying to solve since a few thousand years.
At the end there is only one problem, and that is search. Every other solution is a variant of the search problem. Someone once asked Diagenes why he carries a lamp with him all the time, and he said he is searching for a Man. Maths is just a way of practicing sciences in a way that gives legitimacy to our inability to solve the search problem. We just say maths is hard, instead of, well, I cannot solve the search problem. I recently fell upon the fact that Maths and computer science used to be part of same department called maths department. Let's hope both strands of smart people come together to solve the search problem, and hope they can also find the answer to why we are here, and what are are we doing here. But it should also include a caveat that kings once upon a time used put on the smart people, that either they should solve or risk being thrown out of the kingdom.
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